


Adorning His Court

by Bloodnok



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Coercion, Gen, Non-consensual ritual performance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 20:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21464107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bloodnok/pseuds/Bloodnok
Summary: After the end of the world, Jonah Magnus basks in his victory and corrects the one imperfection that troubles his reign.A few hundred words of character study, with, if you squint, a smidge of plot and pining.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Jonathan Sims, Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 3
Kudos: 98





	Adorning His Court

**Author's Note:**

> "You can't write fix-it fic for the Big Bad," they said.  
"You're supposed to make things better for the nice characters, not give the evil ones even more of Everything They Ever Wanted," they said.
> 
> Well, I sure showed them!

There is a crown that sits on Jonah Magnus' head. It is not the Watcher's. It is his. He made it himself and he is King. He rules the world from the Palace that bears his name. He is hated. He is feared. He is loved. 

And when it suits him, he loves in return.

Now, Jonah Magnus is certainly a monster, but a very human one. (all the Worst monsters are.) and what good is a world to rule if you do not feel the joy of having it? Jonah is a human monster and his world satisfies him. The power he has brought and bought and tamed allows him to keep all that he covets.

What he covets, it turns out, is people.

He is very proud of his Archivist and of himself. He is Galatea, in love with the statue he carved partly because it is _his_. He made this beautiful, tortured creature and he intends to savour his creation. His creation does not want to be savoured, but it will, in time.

He… appreciates Martin Blackwood. He does not love him, for how could he love someone who so easily defies him? Who is so troublesome if not carefully managed and directed? If the Archivist is Lancelot, his most trusted, most beloved, Martin is Gawain, too pure to be easily tolerated, but _useful_, given direction, given the proper application for his skills. 

The lives of the others meant very little to him, before, but they amused him with their petty, doomed struggles against his will. He enjoys their furious impotence now. He is above all fears, so is fitting to have some in his retinue. They will see that, in time.

Meanwhile, he does not miss Melanie, or seek the End in her partner. He does not miss Basira, his first reserve, or _her partner_. They were a means to an ascent and a back-up, the latter and the former, an expression of his growing impatience in the last few years before centuries of planning were realised. Basira, almost certainly would have been an ill-suited Archive but Jonah had known his time was coming, had been unwilling to go through the tedious preparatory motions _again_ if Jon had failed.

Fortunately (for one, alone, and not for One Alone or any of the others) his Archivist, his Archive worked beautifully. 

The problem with Power, is that once you've got it, got _all_ of it, there's very little left to do but enjoy it. And Jonah Magnus has so few human pleasures left. Smugness might carry him through to the end of the century but after that he is almost certain to get bored. 

He already misses… People. Smirke, certainly, and those of their little band of conspirators that had failed to, ah, plan for retirement, and had been left behind two centuries ago. Peter had been a nice reminder of the pleasures of games, manipulations, schemes, played with an opponent who knows the stakes and the game almost as well as you do. 

The thing about winning is, he should have everything he wants.

So he writes it down and feeds it to his Archivist and waits, impatient and perhaps a little nervous, for him to read. 

This is what it is: Lonely. Eye. End. Flesh. Spiral. Stranger. 

It is flavoured like wrong-human and it breaks physics and it is meat and death and correct and Him. 

This is what it is Not: Buried. Desolation. (Either, perhaps if there had been a body Here and not in the fog.) Corruption. Vast. Web. Dark. Hunt. Slaughter. (No need to share him any more than he must.)

It is also, he Knows and Sees, Peter Lukas remade.

Jon does not like the taste of it, but he should not have killed Peter with his curiosity in the first place. Ah, but it is churlish to criticise his perfect Archivist for the flaw he had so carefully cultivated. And at least Jon killed him in a manner that preserved him, kept him archived for retrieval at a later date. This later date, in fact.

Peter Lukas appears as if from nothing, just like he always did.

“Ah Peter, there you are,” Jonah purrs, as if Peter had merely been away at sea.

“Elias? What happened?”

“I won,” Elias says simply, linking Peter’s arm in his and drawing him away from the horrified Archivist. “Come up to my office. We have things to discuss.”


End file.
